‘We have no food or water’: Hurricane Dorian survivors feel abandoned

1 min

As aid agencies struggle to reach devastated areas, some residents take recovery efforts into their own hands

The silence along the Grand Bahama highway, the only major road on the island, is foreboding, punctuated only by the occasional truck driving east. The once dense forest on either side of the road has turned to bare branches. Houses and government buildingshave been reduced to their concrete foundations. Cars and small jet planes have been left crumpled wreckages by 185 mph winds. Boats washed inland by the storm surge are planted among foliage.

The sheer brutality of Hurricane Dorian was on display to the few people travelling back towards the worst-hit areas on Grand Bahama, a thin strip of land that is home to 50,000 people.

As a lone pick-up truck slowed to navigate the smashed tarmac ahead, Shenelle Kemp called from the back: We have no food. No water. Were abandoned here.

Kemp, 45, was heading back to her home town of High Rock, in the islands remote centre, an area mostly turned to rubble that had only been fully accessible since Thursday after Dorian ravaged Grand Bahama and the Abaco Islands in the north of the Bahamas archipelago, which is home to about 70,000 people.